Case Histories (16 page)

“But she didn’t seem to have any boyfriends. The police didn’t interview any.”

“She never really went out with anyone. Slept with a few boys, that’s all.”

Was that normal behavior? Was that what girls did ten years ago? If so, what were they doing now? And what would they be doing in ten years’ time? When Marlee was the age at which Laura Wyre ceased to exist. Jesus.

“She was really thick with Josh. They were at primary school together. I never liked him much. He was always full of himself. He was very clever.”

“I can’t find out where he is,” Jackson said.

“He dropped out. Now he’s a DJ in Amsterdam, apparently. Laura lost her virginity to him.”

“Her father thought she was still a virgin,” Jackson said, and Emma Drake laughed and said, “Fathers always do.”

“Even when there’s evidence to the contrary?”

“Especially then.”

“And Mr. Jessop?” Jackson prompted.

“Oh, we all fancied him.” Emma smiled at the memory. “He was really cute, far too good-looking to be a teacher. Laura and Christina were in his A-Level class. Laura was definitely his favorite, star pupil and all that. There was nothing in it, he had a wife and a baby.” (As if that ever stopped anyone.) “Laura used to babysit for them. I used to go and keep her company. Laura didn’t think she was good with babies, but she was okay with Nina—the Jessops’ baby. Laura liked his wife, Kim. They got on well. I always thought that was funny. Kim was really common.” Emma Drake’s hand flew to her mouth in horror. “Oh, God, that’s a dreadful thing to say. It’s so snobbish. But, you know what I mean, she was really sort of blond and tarty. A Geordie. Oh dear. I should shut up.”

This girl was a mine of information. And yet she’d never been interviewed. Kim Jessop had never been interviewed either. “No one mentioned anything about Mr. Jessop and Laura at the time,” Jackson said.

“Well, they wouldn’t. He wasn’t the crazy guy who stabbed her, was he? Look—it was just a rumor, nothing more than a crush. I feel bad just talking about it.”

“Having a crush on your teacher’s hardly unusual. I’m sure Laura wouldn’t mind us talking about it.” As if she were alive, as if she were real. Laura Wyre didn’t care about anything anymore.

“Oh, no, no, I don’t mean
Laura
had a crush. It was Mr. Jessop who had the crush. On Laura.”

J
ackson put Emma Drake in a cab and gave the driver a ridiculously generous twenty-five pounds to take her back to Crouch End and see her into her flat. Then he made his own, cheaper, way to King’s Cross and spent the whole journey home staring out the window at nothing.

“T
here you go, Jackson, all patched up and ready to go.” Sharon pulled her mask down and smiled at him as if he were three years old. He almost expected her to give him a badge or a sticker.

“Let’s make an appointment to take out the root, shall we?”

He thought she’d been speaking metaphorically when she’d talked about the root of the cause, not an actual
root.
In his head.

O
ut in the street he checked his phone. There was a voice message from Josie, asking him to look after Marlee for the afternoon and informing him that his daughter was waiting in the office for him. Except that she wasn’t. There was no one in the office and it was unlocked. A message on the door in handwriting that he recognized but that was neither Deborah’s nor Marlee’s said “Back in ten minutes.” He had to think for a moment before he realized it was Theo’s handwriting (God knows he’d seen enough of it in the last few days). This time it was in neutral black ink. “Back in ten minutes” meant nothing when you didn’t know when the ten minutes started. Jackson felt an unexpected twinge of panic. What did he really know about Theo? He seemed like a good guy, seemed completely harmless, but evil psychopaths didn’t have “evil psychopath” tattooed on their foreheads. Why did he think Theo was a good guy? Because his daughter was dead? Was that a guarantee?

Jackson ran down the stairs and onto the street. Where was she? With Theo? With Deborah? On her own? With a
stranger?
He’d wanted to buy Marlee a mobile phone but Josie objected (when had she become the only one who got to make decisions about their child?). Think how useful it would be now. Jackson caught a glimpse of Theo coming out of the burger bar along the street. He was so big that you couldn’t miss him. And Marlee was with him. Thank you, God. She was dressed in a tiny skirt and a crop-top. There were pictures of little girls dressed like that all over the Internet.

Jackson pushed his way with no attempt at civility through a crowd of Spanish teenagers and grasped Marlee’s arm and shouted, “Where’ve you been?” at her. He felt like punching Theo, although he didn’t know why, as it was obvious that Marlee was fine, stuffing her face with chips. She would probably follow a stranger for a single Malteser.

“I’m babysitting,” Theo said to Jackson, “not cradle snatching,” and Jackson felt ashamed. “Right,” he said. “Of course, I’m sorry, I was worried.”

“Theo’s looking after me,” Marlee said, “and he bought me fries. I like him.” Jesus, was it as simple as that?

“D
id your mother just dump you here?” Jackson asked when they got back to the office.

“David brought me.”

“So David dumped you?” What a tosser.

“Deborah was here.”

“Well she’s not here now. [Where the hell was she?] You left the office open, so anyone could have walked in, and you went off with a complete stranger. Do you have any idea how dangerous that could be?”

“Don’t you know Theo?”

“That’s not the point. You don’t.”

Marlee’s lip began to wobble and she whispered, “It’s not my fault, Daddy,” and his heart lurched with guilt and contrition. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re right, it’s my fault.” He put his arms round her and kissed the top of her head. She smelled of lemony shampoo and burger grease. “My bad,” he murmured into her hair.

“Is it alright to come in?” A woman stood uncertainly in the doorway. Jackson loosened his grip on Marlee, who’d been letting him squeeze the air out of her in a long-suffering kind of way.

“I only came to make an appointment,” the woman said. Late thirties, jeans, T-shirt, thonged sandals. She looked fit (Jackson imagined kickboxing) but she had dark shadows under her eyes. A Sarah Connor type. Or that nurse from
ER
that all men knew they would treat so much better than her on-screen boyfriends did. (Jackson had started to watch a lot of television since the break up of his marriage.) There was something familiar about her. Most people who looked familiar to Jackson usually turned out to be criminals, but she didn’t look like a criminal.

“Well,” he said, gesturing vaguely round the office, “we can talk now if you like?”

The woman glanced over at Marlee and said, “No, I think I’ll make an appointment,” and Jackson knew right then that it was something he didn’t want to know about.

She made an appointment for eleven o’clock on Wednesday, “because I won’t be on nights then,” and Jackson thought, “Nurse,” which was why she looked familiar because nurses and policemen saw far too much of each other professionally. He liked nurses, and not because of any
Carry On
films or mucky postcards or porny outfits or any of the usual reasons, and not the big, practical nurses with huge backsides and no imagination (and there were a lot of them), no, he liked ones that understood suffering, the ones that suffered themselves, the ones with dark shadows under their eyes that looked like Sarah Connor. The ones that understood pain, in the way Trisha and Emmylou and Lucinda did when they sang. And maybe when they weren’t singing as well, who knew?

She definitely had a certain something. A
je ne sais quoi.
Her name was Shirley, she said, and he knew, without having to ask her, what she was here for. She’d lost someone. He could see it in her eyes.

“A
re we going home now?” Marlee asked with an extravagant sigh as she clambered into the back of the car. “I’m
starving.
”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. I’m growing,” she added defensively.

“I would never have noticed.”

“The car smells of cigarettes. It smells
disgusting,
Daddy. You shouldn’t smoke.”

“I’m not smoking now. Sit on the other side, not behind me.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” (Because if for some reason the seat belt fails you’ll go straight through the windscreen, which will be marginally safer than going straight into the back of me.) Marlee moved over into the left passenger seat. The Diana seat. She locked the door. “Don’t lock the door, Marlee.”

“Why not?”

“Just not.” (So that if the car catches fire it’ll be easier to get you out.)

“What did that lady want?”

“Miss Morrison?” Shirley. It was a nice name. “Are you buckled in?”

“Yeah.”

“‘Yes,’ not ‘yeah.’ I don’t know what Miss Morrison wanted.” He did know. He could see it in her eyes. She’d lost something, someone, another entry to make on the debit side of the lost-and-found register.

The most interesting case he’d had in months had been Nicola Spencer (which just about said it all really). Otherwise it had been dull, routine stuff, and yet now, suddenly, in the space of a couple of weeks, he had acquired a cold murder case, a thirty-four-year-old unsolved abduction, and whatever fresh misery Shirley Morrison was about to lay at his feet.

He glanced at Marlee. She was writhing around in the backseat like a miniature Houdini. She ducked down out of view. “What are you doing? Is your seat belt still on?”

“Yes, I’m trying to reach this thing on the floor.” Her voice was muffled with the effort.

“What thing?”

“This!” she said triumphantly, reappearing like a diver coming up for air. “It’s a tin, I think.” Jackson looked in the rearview mirror at the object she was holding aloft for his inspection. Oh, Christ, Victor’s ashes.

“Put it back, sweetheart.”

“What is it?” She was trying to open the ugly metal urn now and Jackson reached round and grabbed it off her. The car swerved and Marlee gave a scream of horror. He settled the urn in the foot well of the front passenger seat. Julia had asked him to collect it from the crematorium this morning “because you have a car, Mr. Brodie, and we don’t,” which Jackson didn’t think was a particularly valid reason, given that he’d never known Victor. “But you were the only person at his funeral,” Julia said.

“You’re not going to cry, are you?” he said to the mirror.

“No”—said very angrily. Marlee could be like a force of nature when she was angry. “You nearly crashed.”

“No, I didn’t.” He raked around in the glove compartment for sweets but all he could find were cigarettes and loose change for parking meters. He offered her the money.

“What’s in the tin?” she persisted, taking the money. “Is it something bad?”

“No, it’s not anything bad.” Why wouldn’t he tell her what was in the tin? She understood about life and death, she’d buried enough hamsters in her eight years on earth, and last year Josie had taken her to her grandmother’s funeral. “Well, sweetheart,” he began hesitantly, “you know when people die?”

“I
’m bored.”

“Let’s play a game then.”

“What game?”

Good question. Jackson wasn’t very good at games. “I know. If you were a dog, what dog would you be?”

“Don’t know.” So much for that. Marlee began to grumble in earnest. “I’m hungry, Daddy.
Daddy.
”

“Yeah, okay. We’ll get something to eat on the way.”

“Say ‘yes,’ not ‘yeah.’ Way to what?”

“A convent.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a bunch of women locked up together.”

“Because they’re bad?”

“Because they’re good. I hope.”

W
ell, it was one way to keep women safe. Just put them in a convent. “Get thee to a nunnery.” The convent smelled like every Catholic church Jackson had ever been inside—an excess of incense and Mansion House polish. People always said to him, “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” but it wasn’t true. Jackson hadn’t been inside a church for years—except for funerals (weddings and christenings never seemed to figure on his social calendar)—and he had no belief in any god. His mother, Fidelma, had done her best to raise them in the church but somehow it had never stuck with Jackson. Sometimes there were fragments of memories, his mother’s long-forgotten voice.
Anima Christi, sanctifica me.

Their parents had somehow emigrated to the north of England—how and why, Jackson never knew. His father, Robert, was a miner from Fife and his mother was from County Mayo, a not entirely harmonious Celtic union. Jackson and his brother, Francis, and his sister, Niamh. Francis was named for his mother’s father and Jackson himself was named for his father’s mother. Not that his grandmother was called Jackson, of course—it was a maiden name (Margaret Jackson) and it was a Scottish tradition, his father informed him.

Jackson didn’t know who (if anyone) Niamh was named for. His big sister, a year younger than Francis and six years older than Jackson. After Niamh’s birth his mother had become a successful practitioner of the rhythm method, and Jackson had been an unexpected addition to the family, conceived in that boarding house in Ayrshire. The baby of the family.

“What are you thinking, Daddy?”

“Nothing, sweetheart.” They both whispered, although Sister Michael, the fat, almost boisterous nun in whose wake they were being swept along, had a booming voice that echoed along the hallway.

Sister Michael, he knew from Amelia and Julia, was an “extern.” There were six externs at the convent, negotiating with the outside world on behalf of the “interns”—the ones who never left, who spent their days, day after day, until they died, in prayer and contemplation. Sylvia was an intern.

Marlee was rapt with fascination at this new world. “Why does Sister Michael have a man’s name?”

“She’s named after a saint,” Jackson said. “St. Michael.” Why did Marks and Spencer use St. Michael as their trademark label? To make them sound less Jewish? Would Sister Michael know the answer to that? Not that he was about to ask her. Michael was the patron saint of paratroopers, Jackson knew that. Because of the wings? But then all angels had wings. (Not that Jackson believed in the existence of angels.) The corridor, which turned into another one, and then another one, was dotted with statues and pictures—St. Francis and St. Clare, naturally, and multiples of doe-eyed Christs on the cross, bleeding and broken.
Corpus Christi, salva me.